Display twitter/identi.ca native retweets correctly

[Martey Dodoo]

Twitter recently released a new "native" retweet function (see <http://blog.twitter.com/2009/08/project-retweet-phase-one.html> or <http://a1.twimg.com/example-retweet-ui-18-sep-09.png>). However, retweets made using this do not seem to show up in Gwibber. One example of this is <http://twitter.com/Chrysaora/status/7044692978>, which shows up on the Twitter website in my stream, but not in Gwibber.

I am running gwibber 2.0.0~bzr490-0ubuntu2~daily1 on Ubuntu 10.04 (dev).

[Jamal Fanaian (jamalta)]

Identi.ca now supports this functionality as well, and works pretty much like the Twitter implementation.

[myfreeweb (myfreeweb)]

>However, retweets made using this do not seem to show up in Gwibber.
Twitter's API team fixed this - the retweets appear in timeline too.

Trying to implement this.

[Michael Knepher (mknepher)]

These are now showing up in the stream, but are displayed like an old-style retweet, with "RT @author" at the front of the message. If this added text pushes the character count over 140, the tweet gets truncated, with an ellipsis at the end. Any hyperlinks that get cut in half are broken.

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

I know Matt is working on real support in his branch, but if you're using Gwibber from the pre-3.0 branch and want a quick fix of the truncation issue (for Twitter only), this patch should do it.

[davee (davee-sungate)]

@Sandy: thanks for posting the patch, however it doesn't seem to make any difference to how retweets appear.

Example, currently:

"RT @timjonze: At this rate Clegg'll end up with PR, no trident, control of Belgium, £750 cashback and promise Ed Balls will wear mankini ..."

which, for me at least, is http://twitter.com/matgb retweeting http://twitter.com/timjonze/status/13742959083

Truncation is at 140 characters. Any thoughts?

(Do I need to clear out any gwibber cache or anything - the above truncated retweet was in my feed prior to my rebuild of gwibber.)

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

@davee: yes, you would need to clear the cache if you want this to work on retweets you've already received. I did that by wiping out ~/.cache/gwibber, but then I had to reconfigure everything from scratch (which I'm going to file as another bug, since configuration shouldn't be in the cache).

You might be better off just waiting for future retweets.

[Matt Singleton (matthew-j-singleton)]

FWIW, new-style retweets display properly for both identica and twitter on my branch. I've been trying to keep it stable. It's based on trunk, so I think it only works out of the box on lucid. So far I just have basic display working. New/old is not configurable, and you can't yet create new-style retweets. Give it a whirl and feel free to let me know if you discover any problems.

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

@Matt: the reason I didn't try your branch yet is because I can't use Gwibber trunk (desktop-couch issues on openSUSE). But I'll see if I can get the changes to apply to pre-3.0 whenever I get a chance.

@davee: I filed bug #578473 for that config/cache issue I mentioned above.

[Josh Holland (jshholland)]

Should a separate bug be opened for posting native retweets? I can't see one in the application, and I can't find a bug in LP.

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

Yes.

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Josh Holland <email address hidden> wrote:
> Should a separate bug be opened for posting native retweets? I can't see
> one in the application, and I can't find a bug in LP.
>
> --
> Display twitter/identi.ca native retweets correctly
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/500927
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

This is a pretty massive usability bug. I click on retweeted links all the time that don't go anywhere because Gwibber truncates them.

Is there any update on the status of Matt's branch, or my patch, or anything else that can/should be done to help?

[Greg Grossmeier (greg.grossmeier)]

Matt: Any update on your branch? Will it at least display native retweets correctly yet? Don't worry about posting them yet, lets at least get one feature out the door.

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

At the time I submitted it, my patch displayed native retweets without truncation. Though it is certainly not the cleanest approach, and it hard-codes the "RT" string.

[Martey Dodoo (martey)]

Paul Calhoun posted a possible patch for this issue at https://bugs.launchpad.net/gwibber/+bug/546556/comments/8

[Cristiano Fraga G. Nunes (cfgnunes)]

When this patch will be added in the release version?

[Tim Fisken (tim2)]

Various files have been moved since Paul wrote his patch, so it no longer applies. I've attached a refactored version that applies against what is currently the trunk, revision 983.

[Swaroop (swaroop551992)]

Well it's still not working on gwibber 3.0.0.1

[Patrick Calhoun (phineas42)]

Here's an updated patch (no new features from the previous stop-gap patch) for native retweets in gwibber 3.0.0.1.

[Patrick Calhoun (phineas42)]

Here's an updated patch (no new feature from the previous stop-gap patch) for native retweets in gwibber 3.0.0.1-0ubuntu3.

[Sasa Stamenkovic (umpirsky)]

@Patrick Calhoun How to apply this patch for end users? Should I change /usr/share/gwibber/plugins/twitter/__init__.py by hand?

[Patrick Calhoun (phineas42)]

@Sasa Stamenkovic I am not an expert on how to use the "patch" tool. In general, you can run "patch -p0 <diff_file". Depending on the cwd, "patch" might automatically detect what target file to modify. Otherwise, according to the man page of patch, it will ask what target file to modify.

Also, please note that there are TWO files to modify to get a satisfactory feature improvement to gwibber until this issue is fully resolved:
.../gwibber/microblog/plugins/twitter/__init__.py
.../ui/templates/base.mako